From a purist’s point of view, networking has been around since the 60s. But the real heyday of networking started with the Internet boom. And for the better part of the two decades that followed, networking went through a growth spurt that we will likely never see again. New protocols, new transport mediums, new features, new management tools. Through the middle of the 2000s, networking was in the Age of Addition as we incrementally built up what we have come to know as networking today.

But the Age of Addition is over. We are entering the next networking era: the Age of Removal.